A group of college students, who grew up in an NGO-run home because their families did not have the means to look after them, are now teaching children from the streets.
Besides that, the endeavour has given them an opportunity to earn Rs 8,000 to 10,000 a month.
Calcutta Social Project has employed six of its meritorious students to teach children from primary, middle and senior schools.
The initiative has given them a launch pad and in turn will make them employable before they can step into the world outside, the head of the NGO said.
Most of these children came to the NGO when they were between five and 10 years of age.
Some were abandoned by their families and for some their parents’ financial crisis and background meant they would have lived a life in abject poverty, had they not been taken in by the home.
One of the students came to the centre when she was 10 and was rejected because her siblings were already in the centre.
The NGO could not take in three children from the same family.
But Moumita Halder was persistent. And the NGO gave in and she came to the home at the age of 10. She is now a second-year college student and a teacher.
For Munmun Burman, the salary that she earns helps her to financially support her mother, a domestic help, every month.
“I keep a part of it in the bank and some of it I give to my mother,” said the BCom student.
“When I am teaching math to students in Class IX I have to prepare myself. That also a practice for me,” she said.
But while the academic results are important to be given an opportunity to teach and earn a salary, the students have to be serious about their job .
“If they don’t give the same amount of attention then we discontinue them,” said Arjun Dutta, the president of Calcutta Social Project.
The initiative was started because the NGO authorities felt they could not turn their back on its students.
“We cannot keep these students with us when they turn 18 but at that age when they are still in college, if we leave them they will have to go back to the place from where they were brought and that would make them go backwards,” said Mohuna Dutt, the project director.
“Instead we give them an opportunity, teach them to be accountable and they learn the skills that would help them in future,” she said.
Dutt said the NGO’s gain was that the children from the streets and slums relate and respond better to “the peer teachers”.
“The teachers also have an empathy or an understanding of the problems that the children from marginalised sections face,” she said.
